Waterhouse Bassoon Day 2025 Advance Notice

November 8th, 2024

We are pleased to announce that the Waterhouse Bassoon Day 2025 is taking place on Saturday 26 April 2025 in the usual venue in Gloucestershire, UK.

Elisabeth Waterhouse has kindly asked me, Oliver Ludlow, to organise the 2025 day following the successful day in 2024. As usual, Jim Kopp and Mathew Dart, as joint curators of the Waterhouse Bassoon Collection, will be advising during the planning of the event and supporting the event on the day.

We will update everyone in due course on speakers and itinerary.

We will open bookings for places at the event in the first part of next year so please look out for that.

Elisabeth Waterhouse will host the day as trustee of the Waterhouse Bassoon Collection, acquired by the late William Waterhouse in his travels around Europe over many decades. It is undoubtedly the foremost private collection of bassoons in the UK and possibly anywhere in the world, containing bassoons from the baroque era through to the mid-twentieth century, many of them from the most notable makers of their period. 

For those unfamiliar with the collection, here is a short article introducing it:

The Waterhouse Collection

The Waterhouse Bassoon and Music Collection was assembled by William Waterhouse, the renowned bassoonist and author of books about the bassoon. It is a unique and priceless collection of international and historical importance. The bassoons housed in this remarkable private collection are significant to the development of Western Classical music as we know it.

The collection is now in the guardianship of his widow Elisabeth Waterhouse. William Waterhouse was Principal Bassoonist of the London Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra and founding member of the Melos Ensemble. After leaving full-time professional orchestral playing he specialised in the study and research of his instrument.

This was in the early days of the Historically Informed Performance movement (HIP), which encouraged the use of instruments contemporary with the repertoire being played (or copies thereof), when historical instrument playing was a very niche activity and therefore demand for original historic instruments was low. Through his diligence over a period of several decades he managed to acquire a significant number, of which about 50 are still in the collection.

The collection is curated by James Kopp, PhD, a renowned expert and author on bassoons in his own right and Mathew Dart, PhD, also an expert on bassoons whose PhD thesis was devoted to the design of baroque bassoons.

The collection has several notable baroque bassoons, including an English Thomas Stanesby Snr (as well as a Stanesby Jnr) and an HKiCW (a very early bassoon probably from The Netherlands or North Germany). Original baroque bassoons (those made between about 1670 when the bassoon was first designed and 1750) are extremely rare; it is thought that only around 30 known baroque bassoons are left in the world. Two earliest-known English baroque bassoons form part of the WRW Collection.

It also has bassoons from notable makers in the classical and romantic periods, all the way through to the early twentieth century, along with an historic contrabassoon and a notable collection of fagottini. In addition to the Stanesby and HKiCW the collection includes instruments by the following well-known makers: Grundmann

Grenser

Savary (bassoon and fagottino)

Scherer (fagottino)

Rorarius (contrabassoon)